PS 3531 

P575 
$3 
1917 
Copy 1 




THE BAD RESULTS 
OF GOOD HABITS 

'O God, maf^e all bad people good and all good people 
nice!" { Little girl's prayer) 

BY 
I EDGAR PARK 






Done at the Print Shop of E!,rn<"5t F. Dow 

West Newton, Mass. 

!917 






THE BAD RESULTS 
OF GOOD HABITS 

'O God, make all bad people good, and all good people nice!' 

{Little girl's prater) 



BY 



J. EDGAR PARK 



mm 



Done at the Print Shop of Ernest F. Dow 

West Newton, Mass. 

1917 






COPYRIGHT 1917 

by 
J. EDGAR PARK 



f 



NOV "5 1317 
©GI.A477404 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



The Keen Joy of Living Pilgrim Press 

The Wonder of His Gracious Words 

Parables of Life 

The Sermon on the Mount 

How I Spent My Million 

The Man Who Missed Christmas 

The Children's Bread 

The Rejuvenation of Father Christmas 

The Dwarf's Spell 

The Disadvantages of Being Good (out of print) 



FOREWORD 

This book ought to be labelled, "For Internal 
Use Only." It is Poison when applied exter- 
nally to other people, it is an excellent tonic 
when taken internally to stimulate your own 
personality. 

The most serious truths are apt to be fatal 
when administered directly ; they must always 
be taken in an invisible solution of alleged 
humor. All unsuspectingly you often swallow 
a big truth in a joke. 

To the women of West Newton, ''angels of 
mercy and life amid a world of conflict and 
death" this little book is dedicated, hoping 
that the proceeds of its sale may materially 
aid their work in the West Newton Soldiers 
Aid. If by chance copies of this book should 
leave West Newton and fall into the hands of 
any pious folk, they are warned that every 
thing in it is to be taken in the Pickwickian 
sense. 

The Author. 



Vhe ^ad liesults of Qood Habits 

It is a curious fact that I have never felt quite 
at home with good people. I should have been 

The author con- f ^°'^'^'' missionary, for I 
- t_- • ■ have so much m common 

fesses his sins . , , , 

with the heathen. 

But I know that I speak to a small band of 
kindred spirits when I say that there has al- 
ways seemed to me to be an unnatural and 
strained atmosphere among the gatherings of 
professedly good people. In order to be con- 
vinced of this fact, one has only to visit a 
ladies' sewing circle at any church. 
I knew a Scotch boy once who had to walk 
two miles to church, attend Sunday School be- 
ginning at a quarter past ten o'clock, stay for 
church which began at a quarter past eleven, 
getting back home about two o'clock, say the 
Westminster Shorter Catechism to his mother 
all afternoon, or read Sunday School books 
with their morals indecently exposed, start for 
evening service at twenty past six, and remain 
1 



THE BAD RESULTS 



for the prayermeeting which was held after- 
wards at which certain interminable interviews 
were held with the Deity for the benefit of the 
youthful humanity who were present. When 
he was taught that Heaven was to be such a 
place "where congregations ne'er disperse and 
Sabbaths have no end" he sidled up to his 
teacher and said, "Ah, teacher, if I'm vera gude 
there a' the week, will I no' get doon to play 
wi' the wee deelies on the Setturdays." 



"I am tired of life-long habits — those 
disguises — 
I'm tired of learning to be good; 
I would go and fling discretion far for 
ever 
In the heart of a great wild wood. 

I would like to live my days like a wild, 
wild bird 
Where the primroses lie dew-pearled, 
And to leave far behind my little, stiff 
good works 
For the wicked enchanting world. 
2 



OF GOOD HABITS 



Hark! There is the Church bell! My 

relations downstairs in a row 
Boots nicely polished, are waiting — 

Let them wait! 

And yet I know 

I'll take my prayer-book and demurely 

sit as I always do 
None knowing how wicked I am — so 

quiet in the high-backed pew " 

— Marjorie Wilson. 

The heart of the particular side of human na- 
ture which I have to bring- before you is this : — 
Avaunt That respectable virtues 

Stuffiness! ^^^ terribly apt to breed 

uninteresting vices. 
There are two kinds of goodness. There is 
what for want of a better term I must call 
Respectable Goodness, and there is Adventur- 
ous Goodness. 

There is Respectable Goodness, standing with 
its long robes in the corner of the street, pre- 
sumably praying, there is Adventurous Good- 
ness, with a whip of small cords driving the 
3 



THE BAD RESULTS 



whole Holy Fair out of the Temple. The 
first may be all right, but it is uninteresting. 
The second is marvellously interesting. 
There is Respectable Goodness in some 18th. 
century Church of England divine standing in 
his cathedral droning over the everlasting serv- 
ice to the same verger. There is Adventurous 
Goodness in John Wesley riding and preaching 
in the unheard-of open air v^ithout gown or 
bands, to tens of thousands of common folk 
throughout the whole length and breadth of 
England. 

There is Respectable Goodness in the good 
Scotch elder or New England Deacon who 
assigned his wife and children their Sunday 
afternoon tasks and then slumbered in ortho- 
dox fashion in his ancestral arm-chair. There 
is Adventurous Goodness in the boy who 
sneaked out and ran out into the woods and 
learned the notes of the birds, made friends 
with the flowers of the field. 
And today there is a lot of respectable good- 
ness in our churches. There is a kind of 
4 



OF GOOD HABITS 



suburban soap that won't wash slums, and 
the little girl's report of the text that was 
not far wrong : — " Many are cold, but few 
are frozen." There too you can see whole 
congregations in the attitude of worship pre- 
sumably praying. There too you can hear 
whole congregations singing words of the lof- 
tiest piety and aspiration. And outside the 
church there is today lots of adventurous good- 
ness in unorthodox and almost disreputable 
places. Sometimes we all understand what 
the Englishman meant when he said : — ''You 
never saw a Christian in church, or a lady in 
a 1st class carriage." 

Roman Catholic critics may say that Protest- 
antism is the worship of material success, that 

in spite of all our high 
Fourteenthhes •, . , 

soundmg phrases our su- 

at a discount j • ^ • i 

preme end is to raise people 

to a certain level of material well-being. A 

steady, industrious life is its end. It has not 

much use for contemplation, devotion, art, or 

any of the interests that may fill the higher 

5 



THE BAD RESULTS 



spaces of the soul. It produces a prosperous, 
respectable, somewhat uninteresting life. Per- 
haps our Roman Catholic brethren have less 
class spirit and more real religious devotion 
in their churches, because they do not worship 
respectability so much as we do. 
I believe the lesson which the Roman church 
has to teach the Protestants is this : — "There 
is more in life than the moral of it, there is the 
mystery of it, and there is the beauty of it." 
Protestantism has been founded upon the idea 
that this universe was established solely and 
simply as a school of moral discipline for hu- 
man beings ; that all there was of life was the 
moral of it. The sermon is the thing. All 
else is the preliminary service. Now it is a 
peculiar fact, that morals are always eminently 
respectable but deadly uninteresting. A church 
or a church service that is founded upon the 
theory that God is interested in conduct and in 
nothing else will be dull. 

"The Reformation," says one writer, "swept 

away the last shreds of Pagan purple, the last 

6 



OF GOOD HABITS 



half-withered flowers of Pagan fancy, out of 
Christianity, and left it a white-washed utili- 
tarian thing — a Methodist chapel, well-ventila- 
ted and well-warmed, but singularly like a 
railway station or a wash-house." 
Now the whole glory of Protestantism has 
been in its identification of the ethical with the 
religious. But the whole glory of Catholicism 
has been in its assertion that the religious is a 
wider circle than the ethical. 
Good habits have bad results as long as they 
are followed for their own sake. The results 

„ , , of gfood habits only become 

Remember what , ,, , , . 

. wholly good when those 

happened to the , ,. , r .. .1 

^^ ^ ^ . habits have forgotten them- 

worm for gettmg , , , 1 , 

7 selves and lost themselves 

up too early . ,. t,^ ^ • 

m personality. Moral prm- 

ciples are impotent to touch humanity till they 

are clothed in beauty and mystery. And the 

full union of beauty and mystery is personality. 

You believe for instance that early rising is 

a good habit you ought to adopt. You get 

up at five o'clock some morning. What is the 

7 



THE BAD RESULTS 



result? The result is that you are so con- 
ceited all the morning and so tired and bad- 
tempered all the afternoon and evening that 
there is no living with you at all. It is a good 
habit I admit, just think of the enormous num- 
ber of w^orms of v^hose unnecessary presence 
it has cleared the earth. But the poor w^orm 
did not profit by it. See that you do. If you 
must get up early in the morning, let your 
early rising silently justify itself by its w^orks. 
Wait till someone asks you how you manage 
to get so much done in the day, before you 
talk about it The attractive virtue must 
always be in solution in life. 

Or think for a minute, of Conscientiousness, 
that supreme glory of New England. Now 
conscientious people are 
Alice and Mark g,„^,^i,y ^ated. We fly 
our greatest ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ j^^^ ^^ jjg_ 

philosophers ^^„ ^^ ^^^ ^^.^^ ^^ ^^^ 

promises to lead us to "The Land of the 
Heart's Desire": — 

8 



OF GOOD HABITS 



"Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, 
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, 

Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue, 
And where kind tongues bring no captivity, 

For we are only true to the far lights, 
We follow singing over valley and hill." 



Conscientiousness when followed for its own 
sake produces a whole host of stuffy uninter- 
esting vices. 

We all know those hateful prim people who 
draw themselves up and purse their mouths 
together and say, ''Well I don't like saying it, 
but I feel it my duty to say," and then with a 
gesture of the hand seem to break the film of 
ice on the top of an invisible pail of water and 
throw it all over the project at issue and down 
the back of the neck of every one present. 
"Upon my word," said one poor man, weary 
v/ith the perpetual preaching which he was 
always receiving from both pulpit and pew, 
in the old days evangelical, in modern days, 
ethical, "Upon my word I don't know which 
9 



THE BAD RESULTS 



is the greater plague, the old fashioned nuis- 
ance called a soul, or the new-fangled bore 
called mankind." You know the moral aristo- 
crat. His motto is "All or nothing." He ap- 
pears among temperance reformers oftentimes. 
He is generally so much under the influence 
of pie and doughnuts that he lumps together 
alcohol, smoking and dancing as the devil in- 
carnate. He is generally a she or a bunch of 
shes, who over their third cup of tea condemn 
the soldier's cigarette. 

We meet the moral aristocrat among politi- 
cians. One of the most hopeful movements 
for reform in one of our large cities was lost 
a short while ago because the reform candidate 
was a moral aristocrat. He was conscientious 
for the sake of being conscientious, and not 
for the sake of reform. He refused in a public 
manner even to shake hands with the other 
candidate. Part of us respects him for it and 
yet it was but a type of the great tactical 
blunders which lost the campaign. 
The English statesman John Morley after his 
10 



OF GOOD HABITS 



experience as governor of India recently said 
that one of the greatest hindrances to real re- 
form in India was the impatient idealist who 
would not recognize the slow practical steps 
which are necessary to bring any great reform 
about, but comes forward saying, "Don't you 
admit that this is just and right? Why then 
don't you do it? If you don't do it immediate- 
ly then I shall have nothing more to do with 
you. I shall denounce you as a coward and a 
traitor." 

Worse still as the result of conscientiousness 
is the moral prig who is always preaching. 
"Alice in Wonderland," one of the greatest 
books in the English language, is a grand paro- 
dy and skit upon the morally priggish ways 
we have of bringing up children. Alice cannot 
say anything but she is corrected and told 
that is not the right way to say it, she has 
the lesson pointed out about everything. "I 
see nobody in the road," said Alice, "I only 
v/ish I had such eyes," said the King in a re- 
proving tone, "to be able to see Nobody." 
11 



THE BAD RESULTS 



"There is nothing like eating hay when you're 
faint," said the King. "I should think throw- 
ing cold water over you would be better," 
Alice suggested. 

"I didn't say there was nothing better," said 
the King severely, ''I said there was nothing 
like it." 

Most parents allow conscientiousness to bear 
its bitter fruit in them and become moral prigs 
full of corrections and lessons, walking ser- 
mons. The great reason why Mark Twain 
was so tremendously popular with us all was 
that he never preached. He often pretended 
he was going to and then delighted us all 
when at the last moment we expected "And 
now dear brethren, what is the lesson of this 
for us — ", he burst out laughing. "When you 
get mad, count 100 — and then swear." 

"Be good, and you will be — very lonely." 

"When in doubt tell — the truth." Such are 

some of his excellent ways of charming us by 

12 



OF GOOD HABITS 



not preaching and you can all remember scores 
of others. 



One bad result of conscientiousness followed 

for its own sake is the morbidly tender con- 

The dilemma of ^^i^"^^- ^ome of our good 

the centipede ^^^^"^^ ^^^^^ ^^^"^ ^^^ ^ 

good hour as to whether 

their conscience allows them to begin a letter 
to a stranger with '"Dear." Ought we to give 
prizes to children, is another favorite topic for 
discussion for these delicate souls. Every sub- 
ject that comes before them has to be subjected 
to the delicious subdivisions of this conscience, 
till real, instant, heroic action becomes impos- 
sible, — till they carry such cultivated con- 
sciences within them that like Pascal they be- 
gin to wonder if it is right for them to kiss 
their own sisters. As for any real adventur- 
ous, thrilling heroic action they are far too 
much in the condition of the mind of the 
centipede. 

13 



THE BAD RESULTS 



"The centipede was happy quite, 
Until the toad for fun, 
Asked him which leg came after which, 
Which worked his mind to such a pitch, 

He lay distracted in a ditch, 

Considering how to run," 

O, the stuffiness of so much reputed goodness ! 
O, the machine made mechanical goodness 
which is little but selfish obedience to laws and 
consciously formed prudential habits. It has 
got to such a pitch now that if you don't 
swear or drink, you have to prove in some 
definite way that you are a good fellow, the 
whole appearance of things is against you and 
the burden of the proof lies upon you. 
It is a joy to meet a man like Paul who was 
conscientious enough but avoided the bad re- 
sults of that good habit. He was no moral 
aristocrat, he said, "I am all things to all men 
if by any means I may win some." He was no 
moral prig, when he called men sinners he 
prefaced that statement with the confession 
that he was the chief (as the Rev. William 
14 



OF GOOD HABITS 



Sunday would say) "of the whole bunch." He 
did not cultivate a luxuriously tender con- 
science, when asked about eating meat which 
had been offered to idols, he said, "What is 
sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no ques- 
tions." 

The habit of telling the truth is a good habit, 
you will say. Yes, but Oh ! with such bad 

rr,, , r results. 

There s more of ^^^ . , . , . 

,. . We are ni the midst of a 
lies m , . , . . , 

^ . perfect epidemic of truth 
prosy truth 

telling at the present time. 

Apparently sane and responsible householders 

are sitting down and discussing such questions 

as these : — Is it right to tell the children that 

Santa Claus is coming when it is only Uncle 

Jim dressed up? Or is it right to tell the child 

that the angel brings the new baby instead of 

telling it the truth as to where the baby's soul 

really did come from. 

But as I look in the eyes of our little baby, I 

recognize that angels had a great deal more 

to do with bringing her to me than doctors. 

15 



THE BAD RESULTS 



As well might you step up behind your friend 
at the opera and whisper in her ear as she is 
enjoying Lohengrin that those are not real 
trees but only pasteboard, that that is really 
not a God-sent man, but only an old Italian 
who in ten minutes will be enjoying a glass of 
beer behind the scenes, as to tell your child 
that Santa Claus is Uncle Jim. It is a lie. 
The President is more than Wocdrow Wilson. 
Marie Antoinette was more than the Widow 
Capet. Lohengrin is more than the Italian 
singer. Santa Claus is more than Uncle Jim. 
Oh ! how our prosaical truth-tellers have 
tried to destroy all the poetry and beauty of 
the world. Mistral says if some old anatomi- 
cal professor comes up to the lover and tells 
him that she whom he calls his goddess and 
peerless love is merely a grim skeleton 
stretched over, parchment-like, with skin, the 
lover would be justified in shooting the pro- 
fessor at sight. To all of which I say a most 
hearty Amen. "O this talk of realism ! A 
bird gives us the impression of flight, not of 
16 



OF GOOD HABITS 



feathers !" "I would rather be damned for tell- 
ing a kindly lie than saved for telling a cruel 
truth." 

Piety is a good habit and the setting apart of 
a special time every day for Bible reading and 
prayer. Some of us wish we were built that 
way, but Sam Walter Foss has clearly indi- 
cated to what ill effects that good habit may 
result. 

"Run down and get the doctor, — quick!" 

Cried Jack Bean with a whoop; 
"Run, Dan; for mercy's sake, be quick! 

Our baby's got the croup." 
But Daniel shook his solemn head, 

His sanctimonious brow, 
And said: "I cannot go, for I 

Must read my Bible now; 
For I have regular hours to read 
The Scripture for my spirit's need." 

Said Silas Gove to Pious Dan, 

"Our neighbor, 'Rastus Wright 
Is very sick; will you come down 

And watch with him tonight?" 
"He has my sympathy," said Dan, 

17 



THE BAD RESULTS 



"And I would sure be there, 
Did I not feel an inward call 

To spend the night in prayer. 
Some other man with Wright must stay; 
Excuse me while I go and pray." 

"Old Briggs has fallen in the pond!" 

Cried little 'Bijah Brown; 
"Run, Pious Dan, and help him out. 

Or else he sure will drown!" 
"I trust he'll swim ashore," said Dan, 

"But now my soul is awed, 
And I must meditate upon 

The goodness of the Lord; 
And nothing merely temporal ought 
To interrupt my holy thought." 

So Daniel lived a pious life, 

As Daniel understood, 
But all his neighbors thought he was 

Too pious to be good; 
And Daniel died, and then his soul 

On wings of hope elate, 
In glad expectancy flew up 

To Peter's golden gate. 
"Now let your gate wide open fly, 
Come, hasten, Peter! Here am I." 
18 



OF GOOD HABITS 



"I'm sorry, Pious Dan," said he, 

"That time will not allow 
But you must wait a space, for I 

Must read my Bible now." 
So Daniel waited long and long, 

And Peter read all day. 
"Now, Peter, let me in," he cried. 
Said Peter, "I must pray; 
And no mean temporal affairs 
Must ever interrupt my prayers." 

Then Satan, who was passing by, 

Saw Dan's poor shivering form, 
And said, "My man, it's cold out here; 

Come down where it is warm." 
The angel baby of Jack Bean, 

The angel 'Rastus Wright, 
And Old Briggs, a white angel, too, 

All chuckled with delight; 
And Satan said, "Come, Pious Dan, 
For you are just my style of man."* 

Diligence is the preeminent American virtue. 
Its bad results are apparent to all visitors to 



By kind permission of Lothrop, I,ee & Shepherd Co., from 
"Whiflfs From Wild Meadows," by Sam Walter Foss. 

19 



THE BAD RESULTS 



this land. Life here demands that you fill 
every moment, read the paper in the cars 
hanging on to the strap, that you get up and 
stand in the aisle five minutes before you come 
into the station. The great thing is to be 
doing something all the time, it does not mat- 
ter so much what you are doing. This one 
good custom has corrupted the world. People 
have forgotten that just as every great build- 
ing requires a fine site to make it seem great 
and beautiful, so every great idea requires 
atmosphere. Poise, atmosphere, calm, these 
are greater personal attributes than of con- 
stantly being on the rush and if possible even 
seeming busier than you are. 

"A wild and foolish laborer is a king, 

To do and do and do, and never dream." 

One of the latest biographers of Lincoln says 
truly of him, "He always loafed a little," and 
years before Wordsworth had emphasized the 
same human need, when he said: — 
20 



OF GOOD HABITS 



"Nor less I deem that there are powers 
Which of themselves our mind impress 
That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 
Think you mid all this mighty sum 
Of things forever speaking, 
That nothing of itself will come, 
But we must still be seeking." 



The hustler is one of the bad results of the 
good habit of diligence. 

Opposed to that is the at- 
In love with titude of one who is in love 

the moment ^ith the moment :— the sac- 

ramentarian. 

It is worth taking time in this busy world to 
realize the mystery and beauty of our common 
daily lives. The hustler looks upon every- 
thing as a means to something else. The 
flower is good because you can pull it. The 
bird is welcome because you can shoot at 
it. Another day is a boon because you can 
make some money in it. No part of life is of 
value in itself. Everything is a means to 
21 



THE BAD RESULTS 



something else. But the sacramental view of 
life looks at the passing day as the supremely 
great thing. Home courtesy, daily kindness, 
friendly fellowship, the beauty of the flower 
untouched by human hand and with the morn- 
ing's dew upon it, the one exquisite moment 
of the bird's song heard in the woods — these 
are the really great things. These are the 
things the hustler is apt to trample down in 
his mad chase for some will-o'-the-wisp he calls 
success but which he never is ready to settle 
down and possess. How sadly often the "Hill 
of Dreams" as Helen Lanyon sings is bartered 
away for the drab efficient uphill drag of the 
useful drudge. 

My grief! for the days that's by an' done, 

When I was a young girl straight an' tall, 
Comin' alone at set o' sun, 

Up the high hill road from Cushendall. 
I thought the miles no hardship then, 

Nor the long road weary to the feet; 
For the thrushes sang in the deep green glen, 

An' the evenin' air was cool an' sweet. 
22 



OF GOOD HABITS 



My head with many a thought was throng, 

An' many a dream as I never told, 
My heart would lift at a wee bird's song, 

Or at seein' a whin bush crowned with gold. 
And always I'd look back at the say, 

'Or the turn o' the road shut the sight 
Of the long waves curlin' into the bay, 

And breakin' in foam where the sands is white. 



I was married young on a dacent man, 

As many would call a prudent choice, 
But he never could hear how the river ran 

Singin' a song in a changin' voice; 
Nor thought to see on the bay's blue wather 

A ship with yellow sails unfurled, 
Bearin' away a King's young daughter 

Over the brim of the heavin' world. 



The way seems weary now to my feet. 

An' miles bes many, an' dreams bes few; 
The evenin' air's not near so sweet. 

The birds don't sing as they used to do. 
An' I'm that tired at the top o' the hill, 

That I haven't the heart to turn at all, 
To watch the curlin' breakers fill 

The wee round bay at Cushendall. 
23 



THE BAD RESULTS 



The last good habit of whose bad results I 
shall speak is the habit of cheerfulness. In 
Tired of that ^^^^ respect we live today 

confounded grin i^ the midst of a great 

bacchanalia of nonsense. 
Let me read you the parable of the two work- 
ers : — 

The first worker sat in a sunny room whose 
windows opened on the street. The door was 
ajar and he could listen to the conversation of 
the neighbors as they lingered at the corner. 
He whistled at his work. When he was not 
whistling he smiled. Above his bench hung 
a card and on it in large red letters the one 
word, GRIN. Other mottos hung around, 
DON'T WORRY, and IT WILL BE ALL 
THE SAME IN THE END. In this genial 
atmosphere he worked away, smiling and 
whistling and throwing a genial remark out to 
a passing neighbor from time to time, and the 
work he turned out was no good. 
The second worker sat upstairs and slaved in 
silence like grim death. He worried like any- 
24 



OF GOOD HABITS 



thing lest he should not get his work just 
right. Neighborly friends knew enough of his 
ill-nature at such times to leave him alone. 
He did not look up to see if the sun was shin- 
ing, but the idea of his own task was red-hot 
within him and he kept his eyes upon his 
work. 

He did not live to be 100 but the work which 
he did will live forever. 

But the time has now come to draw together 
the tangled thread of this discourse and show 
whither we have been tend- 
Getting through j^g. The question to be 
with rails and asked now is this, "Shall 

becoming an ^g not then adopt good 

auto habits at all?" If good 

habits have such bad results, shall we not 
avoid their formation altogether? To which 
the clear answer is, we are bound to form 
good habits but we must not look upon them 
as ends in themselves, but only as means to a 
further and greater end. Morality followed 
25 



THE BAD RESULTS 



for its own sake becomes barren respectability 
and uninteresting routine. 
Truthfulness followed for its own sake results 
in the destruction of the poetry and romance 
of life. 

Diligence pursued for the sake of being 
diligent, results in the life of the superficial 
hustler. 

Cheerfulness sought after as an end in itself 
freezes upon your face the ghastly metaphysi- 
cal grin. 

You destroy the beauty of what appears to be 
a spontaneous act by confessing that it is only 
habitual or done out of a grim sense of duty. 
A lonely stranger was cheered by having a 
gentleman talk to him in a friendly way as he 
was coming out of a New York church. But 
his soul was chilled when the conversation 
ended with the remark, "We always talk to 
every stranger here," as the man professionally 
turned aside to greet with identical effusion 
and phrases another victim. "I came to make 
one more," was the soul-deadening indictment 
26 



OF GOOD HABITS 



of her conduct brought by one lady against 
herself as she greeted the poor minister at the 
prayer-meeting. He had hoped that she might 
even like to come. 

Conscious habits are only useful as stepping 
stones to unconscious personality. 
"Our freedom, in the very movements by which 
it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that 
will stifle it if it fails to renew itself of a con- 
stant effort : it is dogged by automatism. The 
most living thought becomes frigid in for- 
mula that expresses it. The word turns against 
the idea." — Bergson. 

The bad result of every good habit is that 
you are so apt to fall in love with the habit 
and to forget its end. So many of us good 
people are merely good habits gone mad. We 
have been so prim and petty and precise, so 
superior and stodgy and Sunday-clothesy, so 
oldmaidish and dogmatic and dull, so narrow 
and blind and bedraggled, looking for all the 
world as if, like Erasmus, we were descended 
27 



THE BAD RESULTS 



from "a long line of maiden aunts." What 
wonder that so many brilliant souls have shied 
at us and taken the wrong turning. The most 
dangerous and destructive force in Europe to- 
day was thus produced. The philosophy of 
Nietzsche, the source of German madness, was, 
we are told, originally "a reaction against his 
aunts." 

One of the most pregnant and beautiful ideas 

in all literature is the general scheme of 

_, _. ._ Dante's Purgatorio. 

The Beatific ,,, . .f ^ ,. 

^^. . We see m it a great sunlit 

Vision . *^ 

mountain, terrace above 

terrace peopled by souls employed in acquir- 
ing good habits and purging themselves of 
bad habits. But ever and anon the whole 
living mountain trembles and bursts forth into 
a great song of praise as a soul graduates out 
of this condition into a higher. And upon the 
entrance into the terrestrial paradise which is 
at the summit of this mount of purgatory we 
see what this higher condition is. It is the 
28 



OF GOOD HABITS 



life in which all good habits are in invisible 
solution. Good habits have at last merged 
themselves into a healthy personality. 
**Free, upright healthy is thy will, 
And error were it not to do its bidding: 
Thee o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre." 

Henceforth not Virgil, the guide of consciously 
formed and reasoned habits, but Beatrice the 
spirit of spontaneous love is to lead his soul 
onward into boundless life. 

The end of life then is not obedience to prin- 
ciples however good, it is the love of persons. 
Not good habits, but daring, original, clean 
personality. Not moral probity but adventur- 
ous goodness. Not speaking the truth, but 
"truth-ing it" in love. Not hustling through 
life, but loving each moment and making it 
sublime ; not grinning superficially, but touch- 
ing the deepest springs of other personalities 
with joy: not "I believe in things," "I believe 
in the past," but "I believe in people," "I be- 
lieve in now." 

29 



THE BAD RESULTS 



Life is not an old gentleman's private school 
of character, it is a great adventure. We are 

The Great ^ ^^^^ ^^^"^ ^"^ ^" ^ ^^^^^ 

_, , - , adventurous quest. God is 

Pathfinder , ^ , , . 

not the spectator, looking 

on, nor a reviewer seeing the procession pass 
by his grand stand, nor a kind of infinite inva- 
lid watching over a dying world, nay far rather 
God is the Pathfinder for us all, the great 
Forerunner, and Ideal of the human spirit. 
Wherever the human soul arrives in its chase 
breathless, there God has just been before. 
To live aright is to follow God. 

For Life has no glory 
Stays long in one dwelling, 
And time has no story 
That's true twice in telling. 

And only the teaching 
That never was spoken 
Is worthy thy reaching 
The fountain unbroken." 

A. E. 

30 



OF GOOD HABITS 



Out of nothingness, and sleep, out of barbar- 
ism, out of savagery, here we go wave after 
wave of us flung over this single planet gen- 
eration after generation. 

Whither do we all go ? That is what all poets, 
seers, prophets, and sages have ever been try- 
ing to express for us, in color and form, in 
music and song. 

We are out upon the mightiest adventure of 
the ages. This is no mere moral drill ground 
with God as appraiser and spectator, no mere 
testing school for habits. This is an original 
adventurous campaign upon which we are out, 
with God as fellow-adventurer, God's heart as 
well as our own thrilled with all the mystery 
and romance of it all, touched both by the 
splendor and flame, the shuddering and the 
tears, "finding even in the worst of trage- 
dies the means of an otherwise impossible 
triumph." 

There be some that say there is no news in 

being good. But there is a kind of goodness 

that is news, and that is when an individual, 

31 



THE BAD RESULTS 



fresh and spontaneous deed flashes out upon 
the world from the heart of an original per- 
sonality. 

"I love my God as He loves me — 

Merrily. 

I feel His kisses in the breeze, 

And so I carve His name in trees — 

Why not? 

Ten thousand years misunderstood, 

He needs my laughter in the wood 

A lot." 



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lli™i«I,2r CONGRESS 



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